KACV makes classical music more appealing

A documentary about an orchestral piece - doesn't sound very visually appealing, does it?

Well, KACV-TV might just have found a way to make it so.

"Roundings: Texas Sounds and Symbols," premiering at 7 p.m. Sunday, transfers the signature piece of Amarillo Symphony's 75th anniversary to the television screen. It'll be up to the audience to decide how successful it is, but one (admittedly biased) person has already rendered his verdict.

"I think it's spectacular," said Jack Fishman, executive director of the symphony. "KACV has overcome the challenge that orchestras on television always face. Classical music is a static art, not a visual art. They're wonderful to listen to, but not much to look at. ... I don't think symphony concerts live are static, but ... they don't fit well in picture tube."

The documentary accomplishes this by changing the rules of filming an orchestra for television, KACV general manager Joyce Herring said.

Instead of tuxedos and black dresses, the orchestra members are dressed in green shirts. A starry, blue curtain hangs behind them. Cameras zoom in on percussion players, swoop over brass players and alternate between wide and long shots.

"It looks different than a formal concert setting ... and that makes it more compelling for the audience, different than what they've seen before," Herring said.

She said the documentary process was a collaborative one.

"You learn the music, and you talk to the composer and find what his creative intent was. You then think about a creative way to express that, and you edit it in such a way that the music and the visuals are stronger together than either individually," she said.

The composition - "Roundings: Musings and Meditations on Texas New Deal Murals" - was written by Samuel Jones to celebrate the imagery of the High Plains, from the plows to the oil wells to the cowboy. The orchestra premiered a new movement from the piece at most of its subscription concerts last season and debuted the full work in April.

Each movement takes its title and inspiration from a New Deal mural from the Amarillo area, and all contain some sort of circular imagery. That helped the documentary makers in finding ways to make the music come alive on the TV screen.

"In one movement, the bassoons are going lower and lower. (Jones') idea was that was the pipes going into the ground. Knowing that, you go shoot the pipes," Herring said.

The documentary uses archival shots of oil wells and other historical footage, but the bulk of the material was shot by KACV cameramen, she said.

"The visuals are treated as an art form, just like the music is treated as an art form. The combination of the two make them stronger. I hope it's particularly effective for people in our region because we've all grown up with those images. ... When we see the cowboy with the rope, that's who we are," she said.

The filmmakers recorded the orchestra during a four-day stint in April, but they had been working on the documentary "from the first symphony concert in September, when they previewed the first movement," Herring said.

"Buddy Squyres and Dale Robinson were the two that worked on the development of the production design - how the stage would look, where to put the cameras. They also did all of the shooting in the field and the editing," Herring said.

They were helped by a production crew of 50 - "a huge undertaking," she said.

The show opens with brief background material of Jones explaining the murals and how he got creative insight from them. That's followed by an interview with University of Texas English professor Betty Sue Flowers explaining what the symbols Jones used mean.

The performance of "Roundings" is 42 minutes long, "the bulk of program," Herring said.

This isn't KACV's first foray into filming the symphony. In 1991, the station teamed with the orchestra to make "And There Will Be Sounds," documenting the first piece Jones wrote for the symphony. The program - which showed the symphony performing Jones' "Symphony No. 3" in Palo Duro Canyon - aired in 150 markets nationwide.

"('Roundings') premieres Sunday, airs three more times and is then offered to other PBS stations around the country. ... I anticipate that there will be similar interest," Herring said. "That's all secondary to doing a piece for our community. ... The intent is to produce something that people here will enjoy and appreciate."

Complementing the TV experience will be a "significant Internet component," she said.

On KACV's Web site - www.kacv.org - "you'll be able to see the composer's notes about the music, hear clips from each of the movements, ... get a lot of background about the murals ... and background on how we produced the TV show," Herring said.

All of this ultimately should assist people who hear the composition again.

"When you're introducing a contemporary classical piece that no one has heard before, ... we sometimes as a listening audience have to struggle a little bit to see what the conductor wants," Herring said. "... By visually enhancing the music, ... the next time they hear the music, the visuals may not be there, but they'll still be able to see them."